


may i have this dance (and your last name?)

by gxnseysblue



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam Parrish Loves Ronan Lynch, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mentions of Elvis Presley Songs, Ronan Lynch Loves Adam Parrish, Slow Dancing, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:15:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23705224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gxnseysblue/pseuds/gxnseysblue
Summary: evening pynch featuring slow dancing and homemade rings
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 11
Kudos: 113





	may i have this dance (and your last name?)

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by something i was talking to @clawsnbeak (on here and tumblr) about

Adam drifted out of Ronan’s - their shared - bedroom. He forgot that this place, the Barns, was a home for him now from time to time. He forgot that he had a place to call home. He wasn’t even sure the Barns was home for him, or if it was just Ronan.

Ronan, who had softened at the edges since dropping school almost five years before and settling down to farm and dream and grow. Watching him had been like watching a train crash. Unsettling and terrifying and yet you couldn’t look away from the way his mouth quirked into a cruel smile at the expense of another and that carving, sprawling, endless back tattoo that now Adam knew so well. Now watching him was different. He was still sharp and full of dark things that were hard to face, but now watching him move about the homey kitchen and humming to The Velvet Underground (who he thankfully liked after Adam introduced him to them once he couldn’t stand hearing EDM all the time), he was like a plane soaring across a sky. Still dangerous, and yet perfectly balanced in a place that was made exactly for him. A place that he made into his home.

“Gonna keep staring, Parrish?” His voice jolts Adam out of his thoughts and pulls a smile to his face. Imagine that. Adam Parrish, a miracle of moving parts and moving on, smiling at a boy he had been dating for longer than he thought he’d live.

“‘S a good view,” he tosses back, letting his old accent slip back.

“Mhm, sure. Come taste this.” He holds out a spoon with what looks like mashed potatoes on it.

Adam obliges, tasting it. “Good. Needs some more butter though. And maybe salt.”

He nods and sprinkles in more salt. A new song comes on over the speaker. “I didn’t know you like Elvis.”

“I don’t really, but I know you do,” Ronan says, nonchalant. 

Almost six years of dating and he would still manage to surprise him by knowing him. He somehow always knew him, even before they kissed for the first time on Ronan’s eighteenth birthday. The prospect of being known so intimately terrified the everliving shit out of him usually. He wouldn’t even tell Blue what his favorite color was after knowing her for years (and briefly dating her in a stint that they act like didn’t happen unless they were drunk and watching The Bachelor on Monday’s together over Skype). And yet, he didn’t mind it now, the mortifying ordeal of being known. Not when it was Ronan saying it in this place that felt out of a dream, and probably was at least partially dreamed. Not when he said it with such gentle caring that it made Adam feel sick because _“this couldn’t be what love actually was, right?”_ His parents and their fighting that would last up to weeks and their excessive drinking together that counted as a makeup for Robert giving her a black eye when “stressed from work” and their barely talking to each other aside from the occasional comment about some teen girl’s body that resulted in a snippy comment from his mother or reprimanding Adam together. That was love.

He stares for a moment and nods.

Ronan laughs a little (Adam wanted to capture the sound and let it fill his heart until he felt full) and holds a hand out. “May I have this dance?”

He takes his boyfriend’s hand in response and pulls him closer, feeling the callouses from years of working farm equipment. The hands he worshipped with his mouth, among other things. The images that flashed in his mind made him blush a little. His leather bracelets with their gnaw marks have the history of Ronan’s anxieties interwoven on their ever-present loops. 

Adam leans in against Ronan’s chest, and he feels tension in his muscles that he didn’t even realize he was carrying loosen and melt away. Ronan always seemed to have that effect on him. Sometimes he’d massage Adam’s back, and it felt almost as good as sex.

Almost.

Ronan starts a slow, swaying step sort of dance. He felt like he was in one of those rom-coms that Gansey and Noah loved to watch together, but would never admit to. He finds himself humming along quietly, and surprisingly Ronan doesn’t even make comments about his voice like he usually does.

Everything felt so peaceful, it was almost unnerving. He had to remind himself that this was safe, he was safe, he was okay, he was home. 

Home.

A word he kept coming back to.

Somehow in the swaying and the soothing vocals of Elvis and the smell of food cooking, whatever animal noises seemed to be omnipresent in the Barns no matter what they did, and something else that was distinctly Ronan (and not just his cardamom and lavender cologne), he found it. Home. Home was Ronan, in all of his nightwash, Catholic guilt, family issues, and endless dreaming glory. Ronan was Adam’s home, and the thought of that, for some reason, didn’t scare him anymore.

He looks up at the man in question and sees him looking down at him in the exact same way, long lashes almost covering eyes that anyone else would describe as “hypothermic”. Or at least that’s how Henry described them to him once.

“Close your eyes,” Ronan murmurs to him, “Please.”

“Oh? Manners? That’s a new development,” he says with a quiet laugh. It was unlike him to ask things. He was usually just relentlessly demanding. Adam found himself quite appreciative of the development.

“Parrish, please. Don’t be difficult.”

He sighs melodramatically and closes his eyes, covering them with his hands for extra drama. Just because he could. Because he could be full of himself and annoying and a pain in the ass and Ronan would love him all the same and Adam would love him all the same for that and it was an endless cycle. Of course, their relationship wasn’t perfect. They still had their arguments and their pettiness and their years of emotional baggage that would make even the bravest TSA agent cry, but they still found each other again through all of it.

After a couple moments of shifting noises, Ronan says, “You can open them.”

Adam looks down, and there Ronan is, on one honest to god knee. Everything in him freezes and falls apart and he feels tears come to his eyes all at once.

“Adam Gabriel Parrish,” Ronan starts and Adam feels himself getting even more choked up watching him. “I honestly didn’t know what to think when I first saw you all those years ago on that shitty ass bike. All that went through my mind was “Please”, and you might be the sole reason I still believe in a god. Don’t tell Reverend James.” He smiles up at him. 

“We’ve been through ups and downs, for sure. Hell, you literally almost killed me once.” Adam cringes at the memory of the Demon. “But through all of it, I’ve loved you. I’ve loved you through your scheme to kill Whelk, through you seeing the dead me laying on the floor of Saint Agnes, through you sacrificing yourself to Cabeswater, through your late nights at Harvard and everything else in between and after. I’ve always loved you, and I always will love you. You’re my second self, Adam.” 

He holds up a ring, except it isn’t actually a ring. It’s a twist tie from the bread knotted together to fit over a finger - Adam’s finger. Somehow that feels perfect to him.  “I was planning on doing this differently, everyone was in on it, it was going to be a big thing, but... I needed to do it now. Just for us. I just love you so much. Please, will you marry me?”

At that moment he looks so vulnerable, so open, so aching. Adam is shaking from the power of the emotions of Ronan Lynch unleashed on him and somehow none of it feels unnatural. “Yes,” he whispers, his voice not even working properly from being so choked up. “It’s always yes with you.” And the tears start spilling from his eyes finally, right as Nick Cave sings “But I believe in love. And I know darlin’ that you do too.”

Ronan stands and slips the twist-tie-ring onto his finger, crying also. “The other ring- I- I was going to dream one but- I know you wouldn’t want me to go through the effort but- I can get you another one tonight-”

Adam shuts him up with a quiet kiss. “I love it. I love you. Always.”

“Tamquam.”

Adam falls against him in a hug that feels like they’re compressing their souls together as if they split to make the pair of them. “Alter idem.”

Adam was home.

**Author's Note:**

> Song mentions (but not really except the Nick Cave one): I Found A Reason by The Velvet Underground  
> Can't Help Falling In Love by Elvis Presley  
> Into My Arms by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (it's the most pynch song prove me wrong)
> 
> (also, gabriel means "devoted to god" because i had to keep the religion theme in his name ofc)
> 
> hope you enjoyed this! 'twas beta-ed by the lovely @clawsnbeak. you can find my tumblr @gxnseysblue (ya lit/fandom) or @illusionofmyself (shitposting)
> 
> thanks for reading!


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